Tom "kingsofcards" Marchese Takes Down NAPT Venetian Main Event
Published on February 25th, 2010 4:45 am ESTTom "kingsofcards" Marchese has just become the first ever winner of the NAPT Venetian main event, taking home over $827k in the process.
Marchese, who is known as "kingsofcards" online, was able to overcome the seemingly unstoppable Sam Stein in heads up action to take down the title.
When heads up play began, Sam Stein had about 16 million chips in his stack, while Marchese had around 10 million.
After adding a few million chips to his stack early in heads up play, Stein allowed Marchese to double up after making an "interesting" call on the river.
With the board reading 6d-Kc-5h-4s-Tc and about 4 million chips in the pot, Marchese pushed all-in. According to Pokerstarsblog.com, Stein waited for about 15 seconds before making the call with just a pair of fives. Marchese showed Ks-9h for a pair of Kings and doubled up.
The final hand of the tournament came less than 15 minutes later.
When the board reading 4c-5h-9d-3c-Ts, Marchese moved all-in on the river (once again) and Stein decided to make a hero call holding just a pair of fours. Marchese proudly flipped over Th-Tc for a set of Tens to take down the title.
Stein, despite earning over $522k for his second place finish, has to be a bit disappointed with how the tournament ended.
Here is how the final table finished out on Wednesday:
1. Tom Marchese, $827,648
2. Sam Stein, $522,306
3. Daniel Clemente, $309,366
4. Yunus Jamal, $241,064
5. David Paredes, $184,816
6. Thomas Fuller, $144,639
7. "Miami" John Cernuto, $104,461
8. Eric Blair, $60,266
872 total players turned out to play in the event, which ended up creating a total prize pool of over $4 million. This was the first ever NAPT Venetian event - Pokerstars has to be extremely happy with the number of people who ended up turning out. I would expect this event to grow even bigger in size next year.
Today's final table will air April 26th (9 pm ET) on ESPN 2.
Congratulations to Tom "kingsofcards" Marchese on his victory.
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Filed Under: Tournament Results
